A portrait of Patrick Fealey, who wrote about his plight as a homeless person for Esquire magazine.
I’ve never been much of a social crusader like my friend and former high school classmate “Will,” about whom I wrote in a blog post last year.
Will was passing through town and asked if I would meet him for lunch, which I did. It was a great reunion after more than a half century of not seeing one another or even communicating.
Anyway, Will devoted much of his life to important work of helping lift the oppressed and bringing to justice the folks who actively sought to keep the “others” down.
Will, if you are reading this, I’m so awed and grateful for your efforts over the years.
Folks like Will make me realize that I’m more of an social activist wannabe who never really got up off the couch to help anyone, even those with whom I have great empathy.
That leads me to this disturbing Esquire magazine article my wife sent me last week. Entitled “The Invisible Man,” the article is a long, first-person account of a college educated, successful writer forced into living as a homeless person in his home state of Rhode Island.
Patrick Fealey found himself in this plight because of a mental illness that didn’t become apparent until he was a successful adult. Then his bipolar condition resulted in him being unable to hold a job, and the downward spiral began.
For me, the most disturbing aspect of Fealey’s life is that no one really cared. He lived with his dog in an old car, but where ever he landed, he was constantly questioned by police, shunned by local citizens. The folks who operated shelters or housing programs offered little help, hope or sympathy.
Fealey was told to ‘move on’ a lot, even though one of the communities in which he stayed with the town in which he was raised. He was told by one policeman that if he didn’t move on he would be jailed or fined. People saw him as threatening or merely another drug addict.
(As an aside, some folks read about Fealey plight and started a Go Fund Me page that has received more than $169,000-and-counting to help him get into housing and deal with health issues.)
All of this sounds familiar, especially after reading recent newspaper articles about how the city of Shawnee has implemented ordinances that prevent the unhoused from sleeping or camping in public spaces or most any place outdoors within the city limits.
So, while the Shawnee citizens just want the homeless out of sight and out of mind — like most of us — what they are doing is turning homelessness into a crime.
That’s why I’m proud of the city of OKC for investing $55 million through MAPS4 to take on homelessness with its “housing first’ program that partners with innovative not-for-profits. And MAPs also is funding a new mental health crisis center, a restoration center and a transitional housing program that will make a difference.
It’s a start.
There are also several not-for-profits in our community like the SideXSide OKC program and Curbside Chronicle that are working to lift people up. Those are terrific initiatives that are making a difference.
As for myself, I have done nothing to brag about except for occasionally buying a Curbside Chronicle.
I’m not sure what my point in writing all of this is, but after reading Patrick Fealey’s story I think the point is that we have to do better.
Don and Will on the Blue Line before they learned that all their moving plans had turned to dust.
Editor’s Note: Don Mecoy is a friend and former colleague at The Oklahoman who retired as the newspaper’s managing editor at the end of 2022. He shares recent misadventures in Chicago with us in this post.
By Don Mecoy
I love Chicago, even if sometimes it doesn’t love me back.
Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders
Undaunted, I returned to the City of Big Shoulders, and again I experienced the peculiar situation of being homeless without being destitute. Perhaps it would be better to say we were “houseless.” This time, it involved my son’s move from one apartment to another that went awry. Like a big shoulder to the solar plexus.
Here’s the setup: My son, Will, had to be out of his West Loop apartment on Sept. 1. He was scheduled to move into his new Printer’s Row apartment in South Loop the very same day. The lease was signed, the elevators were reserved, the movers were contracted and I showed up a few days early to help out with the packing and cleaning and so forth. He had just started a new job and was understandably reluctant to take much time off, and I’m completely unemployed, so I flew up.
The day before the scheduled move, we went to his new building to drop off a big deposit with the landlord and get the key. That’s when we learned that she would not accept an electronic payment despite the fact that she had previously taken a payment in that form. She wanted a cashier’s check and only a cashier’s check. Unfortunately, my son’s banking account is with an online bank, which made it nearly impossible to get what she wanted in short order. Nevertheless, we said we would obtain one that very day and return to get the key. I should mention all of the communication with the landlord was via email; she never provided Will with her phone number even after they met in person during his tour of the apartment and again when they signed the lease.
Will rushed to open an account at a nearby bricks-and-mortar bank and started trying to fund the account. That wasn’t going to get us a cashier’s check in one day, we learned. I started hitting ATMs to get cash. I called my Oklahoma credit union to see if they had any ideas. My friendly neighborhood banker suggested I could purchase a cashier’s check by taking advantage of a shared branching agreement between credit unions. Unfortunately, the nice folks at the Chicago Patrolmen’s Federal Credit Union said that would violate their policies. A teller’s check was the best they could do. And, they said, even if I showed up with cash in hand, they wouldn’t sell me a cashier’s check unless I had an account.
I was about to go to a check-cashing store to see about getting a cash advance on my credit card. But Will told me the landlord had stopped responding, so we pulled the plug after several hours of frantic money-raising efforts.
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
In the midst of all this chaos, my phone died. I couldn’t field calls from my credit union, or Will, or my wife back in Oklahoma. It also left me far away from Will’s current apartment without the ability to hail an Uber or catch a bus or train because all of my data and payment methods for those forms of transport were in the dang dead phone. I walked about 6 miles that day. At least the weather was nice.
The upshot is that the landlord said she would “review” all of the emails between her and Will to determine what her next step would be. That night, she wrote to Will that she just didn’t find him trustworthy and believed he wouldn’t pay his rent on time, despite the fact that he has lived in apartments for years and never once was late with his rent. She also disputed his claim that she was leaving him homeless because “your dad lives in Chicago.” That was just one of several problems prompted by communicating solely through email. He offered to pay three months rent in advance, but we never heard from her again.
All packed up and nowhere to go.
We were tired and disappointed and angry. But we had a lot of work to do. We had to find storage for all his belongings. We had to contact the movers to make sure they would move those belongings to storage instead of to the new apartment. We had to find someplace to stay for the next few days. And we had to start hunting for a new place for Will to live. And we really needed a beer.
More than once during those troubled days I thought about “The Out-of-Towners,” a 1970 Neil Simon movie starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis about an Ohio couple’s disastrous trip to New York City. While we weren’t mugged or left penniless, we were subject to forces beyond our control in a big city.
But after all those repeated disappointments, things started looking up. The movers agreed to take in his belongings, and even store them for up to a month for no charge. We secured a hotel room. Will scheduled an apartment tour on Sept. 2, and the new place in Wicker Park was fine. The owners had planned a kitchen renovation, but when they learned that he needed it immediately they agreed to sign a lease the same day and knock a little off the rent. On Sept. 5, he became a resident of the trendy area with lots of shops and restaurants and tree-lined streets of 3-story walk ups.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
The new place has great morning light.
Now we see what can be done about the landlord. This fiasco cost Will a fair amount of money. He’s paying more in rent. He had to pay for two moves instead of one. He’s out the cost of the hotel room for four nights. We obviously had no kitchen for several days, and that cost extra. I had to extend my planned stay by five days.
But I got to spend a lot of time with Will — always a good thing. I also loved being in Chicago. It’s a great town mostly filled with good folks.
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness, Bareheaded, Shoveling, Wrecking, Planning, Building, breaking, rebuilding, Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth, Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs, Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle, Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing! Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
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